MTN Ghana’s Chief Capital Projects Officer urges Project Management Professionals to embrace “Agile” as a New Way of Working

The Chief Capital Projects Officer (CCPO) of MTN Ghana, Mr. William Tetteh, has called on Project Management professionals to embrace Agile project management methodologies in their work. He said “Agile” has become a non-negotiable part of project management.

William was speaking on the topic ‘Agile Transformation in a Telco’ at the 2022 National Project Management Conference and Project Management Excellence Awards held at Peninsula Resort Hotel at Akosombo a few days ago.

The National Project Management Conference and Project Management Excellence Awards, attended by over 200 delegates was held under the theme “Making Project Management Indispensable for Business Result”.

Narrating his experience, William said he first heard about the word Agile in 2012 when he joined MTN’s delegation for a leadership training trip to China. According to him, having successfully completed several projects worth millions of dollars with the traditional waterfall approach without any Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) rollover, he did not understand the reason for change”.

He said it took him many years to accept and embrace “the Agile way of working”. “I began to appreciate Agile during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and it became evident that the usual way of working had to change. Since then, I have leveraged Agile in executing all our projects, he added.”

Sharing MTN’s Agile Journey, he cited the use of the most common framework of Agile Scrum to kick off digital apps such as MyMTN App and other digital projects. He also spoke about how MTN employees are being trained to adopt the “Agile” way of work in the execution of projects.

He also advocated for the training of vendors in the Agile methodology saying, “an Agile ready vendor” is a great asset to any business.  According to William, Agile presents enormous opportunities in project management and is not a threat.

During a panel discussion at the same event, the Senior Manager for Enterprise Portfolio Management Office, Mr. Jonas Nanzoninge, joined a panel to discuss “How Can the PMO Increase Project Management Maturity in an Organization?”.

Jonas highlighted MTN’s journey in setting up the Project Management Office and Project Support Offices for best results.

Answering the question on steps an organization can take to reach Project Management maturity, Jonas said, organizations must have a Project Management Framework that defines the Vision, Mission, Objectives, Purpose and achievable matrix. With this in place, the entire organization must be engaged. “Everyone who plays a role in a chain must follow the strategy. Modules must be defined which will form the baseline for measuring the Key Performance Indicators in the strategy,” Jonas said.

In his concluding remarks, Jonas indicated that it is very necessary to ensure leadership commitment to project management activities to ensure excellent execution.